Sublime

on a visit to New York City, he saw hungry-looking men sleeping in alleyways, as if one foot were already in the grave. “These people are Les Miseràbles of America,” he wrote to his parents in September 1965. “People that don’t make it in America’s social race to succeed are simply run over.”

There is a very great difference between the mortality of the blacks and of the whites in the States in which slavery is abolished; from 1820 to 1831 only one out of forty-two individuals of the white population died in Philadelphia; but one negro out of twenty-one individuals of the black population died in the same space of time.

The economic predicament with which he was identified in birth placed him initially with the great mass of men on the earth.…

Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

Rule No. 8: Is secret.

for she “was now in a civilized country, where . . . people are judged of by their clothes.” Even in our democratic New England towns the accidental possession of wealth, and its manifestation in dress and equipage alone, obtain for the possessor almost universal respect.

One of the oldest of the Negro spirituals deals quite interestingly with this technique. The setting is very dramatic. The slave had often heard his master’s minister talk about heaven, the final abode of the righteous. Naturally the master regarded himself as fitting into the category. On the other hand, the slave knew that he too was going to

because in America you got nothing for free.

Her light glows with heartbreaking beauty, but she is unaware of her value. Such a light, whether it be the glow of a woman’s creative life, her wild soul, her physical beauty, her intelligence, or her generosity, always attracts the predator. Such a light that is also unaware and unprotected is always a target.